An increasing number of businesses have become emblems of corporate crimes and violations—Bayer for toxic agrochemicals, Exxon for obstructionism on climate issues, Uber for its drivers’ working conditions.

A wide range of corporations, however, rarely receive public attention let alone become the target of public anger. Without them, however, corporations that are known for their abusive practices could not operate in the way they do.

They include the law firms that plead for their impunity, the marketing firms that promote unhealthy products, the tech companies that help covertly target clients, the lobby firms that corrupt democratic spaces and manipulate public opinion, the auditors and tax consultants that advise on tax dodging.

These corporate servants take no responsibility for their clients’ socially and environmentally abusive practices—and there are no sanctions for doing so, thus creating a chain of impunity.

Yet where would Bayer be without Bank of America/Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse, which helped finance its take-over of Monsanto? Where would Uber be with its practice of bending national laws without the support of legal firms like Covington & Burling? Like the corporations for whom they provide services, many of these are also now globalised and transnational conglomerates, extracting huge profits.

This essay will focus on one sector that has done more than any other to drive abusive corporate behaviour and impunity: the financial industry. Its various players have not just provided services, they have also made it easier for corporations to ignore social and environmental responsibility and reshaped the corporation—resulting in the financialisation of the whole economy.

Loans that allow abuses

Lending is the most basic service the financial industry provides to corporations as a whole or for particular corporate activities. Banks that lend to large corporations tend to specialise in particular sectors in order to optimise their services and risk assessments and so offer attractive interest rates to their clients.

A system of revolving credit allows corporations to borrow over a period of time without further bank assessments. Big corporations can obtain hundreds of millions or billions of dollars through a syndicated loan by an ad hoc consortium of large banks (a syndicate), each lending a slice of the loan after one or more ‘lead arrangers’ have made an assessment of the corporation or project.

In the case of the Dakota Access pipeline, for example, Citibank led a consortium of 17 international banks to provide a $ 2.5 billion syndicated loan. This is one of many examples of how banks’ risk assessments do not properly take climate, environmental and human rights into account.

The research and campaign group BankTrack has investigated and exposed the banks that lend to large polluting and carbon-intensive corporations or projects. Since the 2015 Paris climate accord, for example, global banks’ lending to the fossil-fuel industry has increased every year, pumping $1.9 trillion of new money into the development of fossil fuels, even to the dirtiest kind of energy extraction.

The banks have responded by issuing policies and guidelines, but without making any significant changes in practice.

Banks have even sold off risky loans by repackaging them and transferring them to investors, allowing the loan to continue with little risk to the bank but more risk for the financial system (‘securitisation’—a cause of the 2008 financial crisis).

Banks started to globalise in order to provide services to their corporate clients that expanded abroad. Now they advise on how to find business partners in third countries, or how to export or import. They provide trade credit to importers and guarantees of payment to the related exporters, without which international trade would come to a halt—as became clear when banks stopped financing trade when the financial crisis blew up in 2008.

Banks develop a complex mix of financial instruments to help finance large trade deals, including using the traded produce as collateral.

Not just serving but increasing corporate power

Large banks are not only serving their corporate clients, but also seek opportunities for one corporation to merge with and acquire with another—because the bigger the company, the more loans and financial services it will require. It is no secret that banks favour loans to supermarkets rather than to a corner shop because the business opportunities are far greater.

Investment bankers are therefore crucial players in building giant corporations and corporate concentration in most sectors of the economy. They develop financial merger and acquisition (M&A) plans involving loans and shares, benefits for the top management and cuts in costs— and, importantly, huge fees for the investment bank.

The planned cost-cutting often results in staff redundancies in overlapping activities and proposals on how to use, or abuse, greater purchasing power to push down suppliers’ prices—setting a downward income spiral through the supply chain. Investment bankers, however, still cash in high bonuses and are proud of their M&A deals, even when these subsequently fail.

Big deals for ever bigger pharma

While many people around the world cannot afford costly drugs and have no access to health insurance, large pharmaceutical corporations have no issues with finance, including for expensive M&A deals.

Rising drug prices goes against the global commitment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3, target 8 to achieve ‘access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all’. Yet the banks that undermine this are never deemed responsible or liable.

The financing of huge M&A deals leads to a vicious circle of bigger banks and bigger corporations. The public outcry against ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks that needed to be bailed out with taxpayers’ money has not resulted in splitting the banks, since a proposed EU law was aborted. This was not just a result of bank lobbying. Big multinationals also lobbied against restructuring the major banks, arguing they needed them to finance their complex deals.

Fewer corporate giants mean more profits for rich investors who in turn demand ever greater profits. Corporate concentration in a context of weakened competition (anti-trust) laws—thanks to lobbying—lead to less bargaining power for workers and suppliers, and higher prices for consumers.

Creating the shareholder bonanza and reshaping corporate investment

Beyond loans, perhaps the most critical financing role the banks play is in creating parallel financing structures.

Investment banks provide various services that allow large corporations to be financed by issuing shares or corporate bonds, called underwriting.

First, they advise the corporation on how to become more profitable and attractive to shareholders and bond holders, for example by advising tax-dodging strategies channeled through the bank’s offshore subsidiaries or branches.

The banks then analyse the prospects and risks to the corporations’ profitability—or in the case of new technology companies, how interested investors might be in buying and trading the shares, even if there will be no profits for years, as was the case for Amazon and Uber. They get credit-rating agencies (see below) to give investment grades.

The banks collate their analysis in a prospectus, with no legal obligation to assess the corporation’s social or environmental impacts unless these might threaten itsprofitability.

Second, the banks ensure the listing of the shares and bonds on a stock exchange or off exchange.

Third, once the banks have valued the new shares, they buy the shares and take a risk of non-selling while organising ‘road shows’ to promote the shares among investors. This underwriting of risks is usually shared among a number of large banks.

In the initial share issuance and underwriting of Uber, for example, 29 banks were involved, 11 of which were also involved in the earlier issuance of shares by Lyft, Uber’s competitor. Some of the top banks were Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, others included Barclays Capital, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup Global Markets Corporations and Deutsche Bank Securities.

Share issuance allows corporations to diversify funding from loans or bonds that need to be repaid. Underwriting banks receive huge fees for issuance of new shares, and do not have to set aside costly capital reserves for loans. The underwriters of the Uber share issuance received fees of $106.2 million.

Investment banks and others serve shareholding investors by analysing the profitability of listed corporations. These financial analysists are very instrumental in putting high and constant pressure on company managers to increase profitability, amongst others by comparing them with companies in the same sector. Investment banks also facilitate share trading on the stock market but there might be a conflict of interest if they are involved in underwriting those shares. They help avoiding the dropping of share prices in case of large sell-offs by dividing up the sales of large chunks of shares on their non-public trading platforms, known as ‘dark pools’.

In fact, top managers’ pay with shares options is a further incentive to prioritise high share value and buying back shares over innovative investment or employment. The relentless pressure for high returns to shareholders—the institutional investors, the extremely wealthy and the top managers—has been a big part of the increasing wage gap.

Source: Oxfam International (2019) The G7’s Deadly Sins: How the G7 is fuelling the inequality crisis

In the US, almost $7 trillion went to shareholders as dividend payments and shareholder buy-backs while workers’ income hardly rose, fuelling inequality and also depressing workers’ purchasing power.

This primacy of shareholder value had a significant impact on corporate strategy. At the start of the 1980s, 50% of profits were reinvested in the corporation, but by 2018 this had fallen to 7%.

Concentrating power in the financial sector

The growth of shareholding and corporate bonds issued by ever larger corporations has been supported by financial concentration in the hands of the trillion-dollar investment fund industry.

New financial giants have emerged, dominated by BlackRock (the largest global investment management company with US$ 7 trillion in assets under management), Pimco (specialised in bond investment management with US$ 1.9 trillion under management), Vanguard (the second largest global investment fund manager with $5.6 trillion in assets under management) and Amundi (a top European asset manager with € 1.56 trillion assets under management). They now hold shares and/or bonds in almost every company in the world.

A study of US companies showed that the three top investment fund managers —BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street—are the largest single shareholder in almost 90% of the top 500 firms worldwide listed in the S&P index, including Apple, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, General Electric and Microsoft.

Network of ownership by the Big Three in listed US firms. Source: Fichtner, Heemskerk & Garcia-Bernardo (2017)

Since most other investors spread risks by holding less than 1% of a company’s shares, the three dominant investment fund managers—each holding up to 3% to 8% and together up to 17.6% of these companies’ shares—now have the most influential voting power at the corporations’ annual assemblies or in their direct engagement with top management. Their influence has since long not translated into pressure for corporate practice to adopt goals other than maximising profits.

The enormous expansion of the investment fund industry over the last decade, its interconnectedness with corporations, and the growing amounts of bad corporate loans, could easily end up in a new financial and broader crisis.

The consolidation of power by the major investment funds undermines competition among corporations in the same sector, because funds are dominant shareholders of competing conglomerates, which entices them to support similar corporate strategies. Moreover, the funds are increasingly following an index, valued according to stock-market price based on buying and selling of shares and profitability, with little assessment of corporate behaviour on the ground.

The enormous growth of the investment fund industry, which is requiring more corporate bonds to create funds, is behind a new corporate bond bubble that is likely to burst, having reached $ 10.17 trillion in 2018.

Too much money from (institutional) investors is seeking high returns and corporations are keen to cash in, including those with little or no profitability (‘junk bonds’). The riskier the business, the higher the interest rates that attract investors. Once the economy slows down and these so-called ‘zombie corporations’ start to default on their loans or bonds, investors might sell off massively. The interconnectedness and ripple effect, including the growing bad loans, could easily end up in a new financial and broader crisis.

Sidelining society and the environment

The concentrated investment industry has created even wider distance between the ultimate financier, i.e. the investor who is putting money into the investment funds, and the impact of corporate operations on society and the environment.

Investment fund managers buy shares and/or bonds from hundreds of corporations to be part of one ‘fund’, and follow this process to create hundreds of such funds, which are then offered to investors.

The sheer number of corporations included in one fund makes it too costly, according to fund managers, to scrutinise the on-the-ground impact of each the investee corporations. The funds only publicise a few of the corporations included in a fund, making it difficult to scrutinise all of them by the ultimate financiers.

Moreover, the large investment fund managers outsource their voting rights to proxy corporations, such as ISS and Glass Lewis, which prioritise voting in support of management and profit-making strategies that result in the highest value for shareholders and against resolutions for more responsible behaviour. As a result, they have allowed corporations to ignore the interests of workers and communities and concerns about climate change.

A Dutch Bank, ING, which sells these investment funds to individual customers, even advertises that they can sleep while the bank manages their money. The information focuses only on how much profit their investment funds are making. Yet studies show that in the case of Dutch banks, the investment funds offered to their clients were financing abusive palm-oil companies.

Source: ING website, https://www.ing.nl/particulier/beleggen/beginnen-met-beleggen/index.html [translation of the title of the webpage: Begin with investing – Tips for a good start ]Recently, environmental campaigners have started to confront investment funds’ responsibility for financing destructive practices. Friends of the Earth (US), for example, has attacked BlackRock, for investing billions in corporations that contribute to climate change, environmental destruction and violations of human rights, such as oil and gas corporations, mining corporations and palm-oil corporations.

Other key financial players that provide services to corporations

The decision-making and the cost of financing corporations crucially depends on credit-rating agencies, whichassess the profitability of corporations. They are paid by the corporation they analyse—a conflict of interest. They are also not currently legally obliged to assess social and environmental impacts

Stock exchanges admit trading of a company’s shares, and are themselves for-profit corporations.

The growing privatised pension funds have been part of the push to high shareholder value given that they invest in company shares and expect up to 7% return, with no responsibility for the consequences.

Insurance companies protect corporations not only against damage and theft, they also provide insurance to companies’ CEOs for any wrongdoing and potential legal costs. In order to keep down the price of insurance premiums, insurance companies invest trillions of dollars in long-term financial instruments.

Perhaps the most predatory players in the financial industry are the hedge funds and private equity funds (PE), often based in secrecy-bound jurisdictions and tax havens, and barely subject to EU or US regulation.

Hedge funds are run by private asset managers earning high fees for providing high short-term returns from highly-speculative investments with money from very rich investors, including private pension funds.

Financialisation of everything

Financialisation of energy and food

The financial industry has also encouraged corporations to embrace increasingly complex financial instruments as a way to safeguard their profitability but which has had a knock-on effect on the wider economy and society. So, for example, in order to support large corporations in avoiding risks of financial loss or price variations (‘hedging’), investment banks developed derivatives (also known as swaps, futures/forwards, options), which are contracts that determine prices based on bets of prices in the future. Derivatives’ contracts are still mostly traded off exchanges (‘over the counter’, OTC) away from the public eye, and have doubled in value since the financial crisis, with up to $640 trillion notional amounts outstanding. These can go dangerously wrong as the financial crises demonstrated and have consequently been called ‘financial weapons of mass destruction’.

The most traded derivative is related to interest rates, sold as an insurance against raising interest rates. Banks have been accused of not explaining that these ‘swaps’ also can lead to corporations, municipalities and even farmers to being forced to pay the banks when the interest rate does not raise but goes down—which it did dramatically following the financial crisis. In the Netherlands, the banks even imposed such swaps on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that took out loans: no swap, no loan, even though SMEs knew little about the potential risks and ended up paying a very high price. In other words, bank services may end up serving the bank more than its corporate clients, which have to pay up.

In the case of commodity derivatives, their trading on and off commodity exchanges significantly determine prices of key commodities like oil, gas, minerals, wheat, and also products like coffee and cocoa. These markets have many financial players, setting up the infrastructure for the trading, designing the derivatives contracts, providing analysis, and facilitating the trade for hedging and speculation.

In theory, commodity derivatives guarantee a certain price and delivery date for selling by producers and buying by processors of energy or food commodities. Yet the supply and demand of contracts on commodity exchanges determine the price partly based on bets about future production and partly on the role of speculators, which does not relate to production costs. Nor do those who trade derivatives have any obligation or responsibility to take into account how these commodities are produced or consumed. It is no wonder, therefore, that increasing carbon emissions have not stopped trading in fossil-fuel energy derivatives or ensured that farmers are properly remunerated. In July 2019, 16 NGOs wrote to the London Metal Exchange to expose its dismal ‘responsible sourcing’ policy.

A post-2008 campaign in the EU challenged commodity price speculation after huge price spikes caused hunger riots from 2006 to 2008. It won partial legislative victories in 2014 but by the end of 2019, however, the EU law was under threat of being rolled back. Large oil- and gas- producing and trading corporations, such as Shell, have increasingly engaged in speculative trading. The question is whether this allows them to manipulate fossil-fuel prices so that renewables become less financially attractive.

Financialisation of corporations

The pressure for high profitability has not just ignored environmental and social issues, but has also critically changed the very nature of business models. It has led corporations investing their profits, or even the money from shares and bond issuance or loans, in the financial markets and offshore, rather than in their long-term future, e.g. innovation research for a just transition, or paying taxes and increasing the salaries of lower-paid staff—which might help limit growing inequality.

Some corporations have even moved into providing their own financial and investment services. Supermarkets like Tesco and Carrefour, for example, offervarious banking and insurance services, commodity traders such as Cargill provide credit and derivatives services to farmers, and car manufacturers’ financial subsidiaries provide credit, insurance and leasing services.

The latest corporate financialisation initiative is Facebook’s proposal to issue a digital currency, the Libra, managed by a separate corporate body and using blockchain technology. These IT companies’ goal might not be the financial services as such, but the data they can obtain about their customers’ purchases and transactions.

The doom scenario

Corporations that can readily obtain financing—bolstered by and dependent on loans, blinkered share values on stock exchanges, favourable credit ratings, and protected by insurance companies and derivatives—have little incentive to undertake a swift transition and stop abusive social and environmental practices even if campaigns expose them. Rather, increased share and bond holding intensifies the pressure on corporations to raise short-term revenues from exploiting their value chains.

The overriding pressure can be seen in the case of Unilever, whose CEO Paul Polman started some more sustainable production initiatives and even did away with short-term quarterly financial reports. However, once Kraft Heinz made a hostile take-over bid, Unilever quickly returned to putting shareholder value first, including borrowing money to buy back shares and embarking on a new cost-cutting programme.

The dangers of the financial industry’s lack of responsibility for assessing social and environmental impacts, and its pressure on corporate short-termism, are now starkly exposed by the climate crisis.

Since 2015, a group of central bankers in the Network of Greening the Financial System have warned that carbon mispricing and climate change could result in financial instability or crisis. Climate disaster will cause, for instance, droughts that reduce agricultural production and storms that destroy commercial real estate and homes; at the same time the need for a swift reduction in the use of fossil fuels and related regulations will affect the production of many industries.

This will result in unpaid loans, falling prices of shares and bonds, massive withdrawal from investment funds with shares in fossil-fuel based industries, and extreme price volatility of mispriced derivatives. This would affect everyone, even small savers or pension funds.

Some supervisors include such a doom-laden scenario in ‘carbon stress testing’. The financial industry lobby, however, has been stopping necessary change—and even opposing EU laws to disclose whether or not they are assessing the negative climate, environmental and social impacts of the corporations in which they are investing.

The industry prefers to adhere to voluntary initiatives such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Principles on Responsible Banking or the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) but, as BankTrack has noted, banks that signed the 2003 Equator Principles, still refuse to disclose damaging projects they are financing—arguing that this is to protect their clients’ confidentiality.

Slowly, some shareholding investors see the future devaluation of fossil fuel-assets and are pressing corporations to take action against climate change and new EU laws incentivises them to do so.

New options for campaigns

The financial industry has successfully used complex structures and well-resourced lobbyists to remain unaccountable for its impact on people and the planet. Reforms made following the financial crisis have not stopped it from servicing corporations with abusive practices and further financialising the economy and society.

Civil society organisations (CSOs) have had some success in campaigning against the financial industry’s services to such abusive corporations and projects.

The industry’s continued wide range of financing instruments , however, has allowed corporations to ignore campaigns and undercut myriad voluntary initiatives.This points to the need to push for sanctionable, legally binding measures on, and the prohibition of, many financial players and instruments in the financing and shareholder value chain.

Public anger against growing inequality and climate change could lead to legislators and regulator’ willingness to take bolder action, or electing more radical politicians who can implement alternative financing systems.

One key priority for reform is tackling structural problems such as too-big-to-fail banks and the rapidly expanding but under-regulated investment industry. Why should they be allowed to be so large and make collective profits of hundreds of billions without any obligation to finance a just transition? Weak competition policy regulations as well as neoliberal trade and investment agreements allow these financial giants to expand and help corporations to become ever larger and more concentrated, taking no social and environmental responsibility.

The financial sector needs to be radically reviewed in order to serve society through smaller banks and financial services that are democratically accountable.

There are at least six urgent reforms:

1) Change laws so that the banking sector is made smaller and diversified, investment funds are strictly regulated and reduced, and hedge funds are eliminated.

2) Create a public rating agency or require private rating agencies to investigate abusive practices and harmful impacts on environmental or social sustainability by the corporations they rate.

Experience has shown that achieving meaningful binding laws depends on a prolonged and major fight in the corridors of power against a hugely powerful financial lobby. Even after achieving a legislative victory, campaigning and advocacy need to prevent the financial lobby from manipulating the regulator’s technical standards and thus de facto defanging the laws.

Tackling the financial stronghold will be a key step in stopping corporations with abusive and destructive operations.

Importantly, the campaigns should demand that supervisors and regulators have a legal mandate and resources to enforce strict financial regulations, support alternatives and are accountable to the public.

Regulatory change will not happen without stopping the financial industry’s efforts to weaken or prevent legislation and regulations.The #ChangeFinance campaign managed to secure pledges by 576 European Parliament candidates to distance themselves from the financial lobby. There have been follow-up actions but there needs to be more emphasis on publicising the negative impacts if the financial industry gets its way. This should allow more space for citizens’ voices and highlight many existing or proposed alternatives.

Proposed regulatory reforms include developing a diverse financial sector to finance a just transition. Responsible cooperatives, ethical banks and democratically governed public banks should become attractive alternatives for citizens and companies alike.

The financial industry has become more a master than a servant, extracting value from corporations at any price. Tackling its stronghold will be a key step in stopping corporations with abusive and destructive operations, and should be part of untangling of chain of irresponsible service industries so as to speed up the transition to sustainable and equitable societies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Myriam Vander Stichele is an Associate of TNI and has been researching and publishing about the private financial sector at the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) from a sustainability and public interest perspective, starting with investigating the Asian financial crisis.She focused on the EU and international regulatory process since the 2008 financial crisis. She supports NGOs and networks around the world to identify the risky and negative impact of the financial corporates’ behaviour and lobbying, and advocates for sustainable finance alternatives. She also has been (co-)publishing about the impact on the South of (financial) services inclusion in trade and investment agreements, and has previously been coordinating NGO work on trade and food value chains.

12. Court stops construction of Kenya’s coal power plant. Petitioners from Lamu celebrating the judgment of the National Environment Tribunal, 26 June (Twitter/(@deCOALonize)

Sudan’s Third Revolution

Sudan’s “Third revolution” began in the northern town of Atbara in December 2018. Street protests began after the removal of a wheat subsidy, escalating to sustained civil disobedience for about eight months. The protests led to a major political shift, when President Omar al-Bashir was deposed after thirty years in power.

A Transitional Military Council (TMC) replaced al-Bashir, but protesters held their ground, and in July and August 2019 the TMC and the civilian-led Forces of Freedom and Change alliance (FFC) signed a Political Agreement and a Draft Constitutional Declaration legally defining a planned 39-month phase of transitional state institutions and procedures to return Sudan to civilian democracy.

In August and September 2019, the TMC formally transferred executive power to a mixed military–civilian collective head of state, the Sovereignty Council of Sudan, and to a civilian prime minister (Abdalla Hamdok) and a mostly civilian cabinet, while judicial power was transferred to Nemat Abdullah Khair, Sudan’s first female Chief Justice.

Chilean protests challenge neoliberal state

The 2019 Chilean protests are ongoing. The protests began in Santiago, Chile’s capital, as a coordinated fare evasion campaign by secondary school students protesting increases in metro fares. This led to spontaneous takeovers of the city’s main train stations and eventually to open confrontations with the Chilean Police.

These protests morphed into a nationwide call to address inequality and improve social services. Soon millions were on the streets, forcing President Sebastián Piñera to increase benefits for the poor and disadvantaged,and to start a process of constitutional reform.

On 25 October, over a million people protested against President Piñera, demanding his resignation. Piñera has already canceled some interest payments on student loans, but protesters are demanding more relief for education payments and related debt.

5.5 million women form human chain in Kerala, India

On Jan. 1, 2019, 5.5 million women in the Indian state of Kerala (population 35 million) built a 386-mile human chain, spanning almost the entire state,to bring light to the issues women face in India.

The women gathered and took a vow to “defend the renaissance traditions” of their state, and to work towards women’s empowerment. In particular, they marched for an end to violence and intimidation against women trying to enter Kerala’s Sabarimala temple, a popular Hindu pilgrimage site.

Undoubtedly larger than the historical Women’s March in Washington, D.C. in 2017, this was one of the largest mobilizations in the world for women’s rights.

Algerian protests pave the way towards democracy

These protests, without precedent since the Algerian Civil War, have been peaceful and led the military to insist on president Bouteflika’s immediate resignation, which took place on 2 April 2019. By early May, a significant number of power-brokers close to the deposed administration, including the former president’s younger brother Saïd, had been arrested.

On 1 November, the metro was shut down in Algiers and trains into the city were canceled following a social media campaign calling for demonstrations. Police roadblocks also caused traffic jams. For the 37th weekly Friday protest, which coincided with the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the start of the Algerian War for independence from France, tens of thousands of demonstrators called for all members of the system of power in place to be dismissed and for a radical change in the political system.

There has not been an overhaul of the political regine, and protestors have returned to the streetsafter an election held on 12 December, arguing that the winner Abdelmadjid Tebboune, 74,and the four other candidates were closely linked with the rule of the deposed Mr Bouteflika.

The statement calls on member states to “promote alternatives to conviction and punishment in appropriate cases, including the decriminalization of drug possession for personal use”.

While a number of UN agencies have made similar calls in the past, this CEB statement means it is now the common position for the entire UN family of agencies. Crucially, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime – the lead UN agency on drug policy – has also endorsed the position; finally clarifying their previously ambiguous position on decriminalisation.

The statement also positions drug policy clearly within public health, human rights, and sustainable development agendas. It represents a welcome and significant step towards ‘system wide coherence’ within the UN system on drug policy.

This has been a key call of civil society groups long frustrated by the lack of coherence across the UN and the marginalisation of health, rights and development agendas by UN drug agencies whose historic orientation has been towards punishment, law enforcement and eradication.

The United Kingdom bans fracking

In October, Scotland banned fracking with immediate effect, arguing that it is “incompatible” with tackling the climate change emergency.The Scottish government said the position of “no support” for fracking followed “a comprehensive period of evidence-gathering and consultation” that started in 2013. The decision thus came after six years of deliberations.In November, England also put a halt to fracking in a watershed moment for environmentalists and community activists.

The decision has been welcomed as a “victory for common sense” by green groups and campaigners who have fought for almost a decade against the controversial fossil fuel extraction process.

Same-sex marriage reform in Asia

Taiwan legalized same-sex marriage on 24 May 2019, following a 2017 constitutional court ruling. Despite intense local and regional opposition, Taiwan became the first nation in Asia to permit same-sex marriage.

Thailand seems to be well on its way to becoming the second Asian country, and the first in South-East Asia, to legalize same sex unions.

Court stops construction of Kenya’s coal power plant

Kenyan judges stopped plans to construct the country’s first ever coal-powered plant near the coastal town of Lamu, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Local communities and criticsargued that the plant would have dire economic and health effects.

A tribunal canceled the license issued by the National Environmental Management Authority, arguing that the Authority had failed to conduct a thorough environmental assessment.The tribunal ordered developer Amu Power to undertake a new evaluation. The environmental court also faulted the Chinese-backed power plant for failing to adequately consult the public about the initiative, and cited insufficient and unclear plans for handling and storing toxic coal ash.

The project has drawn protests since its inception, with environmentalists saying coal has no place in a country that already develops most of its energy from hydroelectric and geothermal power. Campaigners have also argued that the plant will devastate the island of Lamu, a major tourist attraction, a UNESCO heritage site, and the oldest and best-preserved example of a Swahili settlement in East Africa.

The ruling was a win for environmental activists and local communities, who for three years argued the coal plant would not only pollute the air but also damage the fragile marine ecosystem and devastate the livelihoods of fishing communities.

While the latest verdict delays the coal plant’s development, it doesn’t put an end to it. Amu Power can still apply for a new license or appeal the decision within the next month. For now, though, local communities are celebrating the win.

Public banks are being embraced across the United States

In October 2019, AB 857 — the grassroots-generated, people-powered Public Banking Act — became law in California. This was the outcome of years of work by the California Public Banking Alliance, which did the work of educating legislators, drafting language, and generating massive statewide public support for the bill.

The bill opens the way for public banks to offer a people-controlled alternative to the private, profit-driven Wall Street banks that have failed to serve the public. It paves the way for a growth in public banking in California, the largest state economy in the largest national economy in the world.

Progressives and conservatives across the United States are pursuing more than twenty-five initiatives for public banks. Thirty of the fitty states have proposed legislation in support of publicly-owned banks, and more than fifty organisations are promoting public banks.

Listen to our podcast on Public Banks to see why this is a big development.

Hong Kong protestors showresilience and creativity in face of repression

Hong Kong has been rocked by pro-democracy, anti-government protests for more than five months now. The protests began in June with one main objective—for the government to withdraw a controversial bill that would have allowed extradition to mainland China. Critics worried Beijing could use the bill to prosecute people for political reasonsunder China’s opaque legal system.

By the time Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, agreed to withdraw the bill, it was too late to quell the movement, which quickly grew to include five major demands, all of them related to expansion of democratic space.

The protests have also led to big pro-democracy votes in their legislature, and some of the biggest mobilizations for democracy ever seen. The protests are ongoing at the time of writing, but Lam’s capitulation to the first demand has only emboldened protesters to pursue more substantial concessions.

Swiss women strike for gender equality

Hundreds of thousands of Swiss women went on strike to protest gender inequalities on 14 June 2019, precisely 28 years after the historic 1991 women’s strike in Switzerland that pressured the government to implement a constitutional amendment on gender equality. The 1991 strike led to the passage of the Gender Equality Act five years later, giving women legal protections from discrimination and gender bias in the workplace.

The women’s strike – known as Frauenstreik (German) and Grève des Femmes (French) online – consisted of demonstrations in the country’s major municipalities for equal pay, recognition of unpaid care work, and governmental representation.

The Swiss Parliament in Bern honored the strike with a 15-minute break in its business. In Basel, a giant fist was projected onto the Roche pharmaceutical company building. In some cities, protesters changed the names of streets to honor women. The Swiss paper, Le Temps, left sections blank where articles edited or written by women would have run.

While demands for equal pay dominated the strike, marchers also called for better protections against domestic violence and workplace harassment.

School kids and workers lead historic wave of climate actions

As global temperatures heat up, so too do demands for action. 2019 saw movements such as Extinction Rebellion, the Week of Global mobilization at the United Nations, and many other protests worldwide.

In September, youth climate activists across the world went on strike to demand immediate action from policy makers, in what has been described as the biggest protest and mobilization since the Anti-Iraq War marches. They brought the issues of climate and labour together by calling for a global climate strike in September 2019. An historic 7.6 million students, (grand) parents and workers from 185 countries participated. More than 70 trade unions around the world supported the general strike and the number of climate groups demanding just-transitions for fossil fuel workers are steadily increasing.

Investors are significant shareholders if they own over 5% of a company’s shares. The sample of firms here are the largest 205 public and private firms across the world, who have more than $50 billion in 2014 sales.

Public Institutions

An Institution is considered ‘public’ if guided by a public mandate, governed under public law and/or publicly-owned by state authorities or public sector entities.

Quantitative Easing

QE is an unconventional monetary policy aimed to stimulate economic activity. Central banks create new money and use this to buy government and corporate bonds from financial markets.

Top 17 Asset Management Firms

BlackRock, US

Vanguard Group, US

JP Morgan Chase, US

Allianz SE, Germany

UBS, Switzerland

Bank of America Merrill Lynch US

Barclays plc, UK

State Street Global Advisors, US

Fidelity Investments (FMR), US

Bank of New York Mellon, US

AXA Group, France

Capital Group, US

Goldman Sachs Group, US

Credit Suisse, Switzerland

Prudential Financial, US

Morgan Stanley & Co., US

Amundi/Crédit Agricole, France

G30

The Group of Thirty (G30) is a privately funded international group of 30 top financiers, academics and policy makers, whose aim is to influence policy and discourse in international finance and global politics.

Trilateral Commission

The Trilateral Commission is an unofficial (i.e. not officially overseen by governments) organisation where 375 global elites from 40 countries meet to tackle pressing international issues.

Shadow Banking

Shadow banking are financial institutions which lie outside of the formal banking regulatory system despite performing similar functions to banks, such as providing credit. Due to this, they raise and lend money more easily, but with considerably more risk.